What do we teach the kids these days?
I’ll admit this question has been rummaging through my mind for the past 4 or so years since I watched conversations on TV from news outlets and joined conferences and conversations around the question that I find is both striking and concerning all at the same time.
To me this question doesn't seem possible, with an answer so near, simple and logical running up my tongue. We need to teach our children how to be critical thinkers, to think for themselves and allow them the space to grow and play without restriction or monitorization. Unfortunately, the 21st century contemporary world seems to favor the latter.
We do not need tests, or strict methods of standardization. We need to provide our children with practical skills sets early on in primary and secondary schools. We need to allow them the space to dive into crafts, to build and get their hands working on concepts that organically immerse themselves in maths, sciences, communications skills through the hand on creative arts and practices. Let our children learn the art of math through the action of dress-pattern making or 3d model builds and learn the art of words through story-telling and wordsmithing. Let them design their world before we design theirs.
We need to stop counting and creating metrics or scales that matter only to the lens of government and economic means as they can greatly prohibit and deter critical thinking, organic exploration and the freedom of self-discovery. I fear we have succumbed so deeply to the inner workings of social scales and profit-value metrics dictating our own personal life that we have somehow trapped and convinced our monkey brains how to become utterly un-human.
Subjects like Math’s, Writing and Social skills are all around us. For example, a play-based educational school of learning may activate more parts of our brains and create more connections than one with structured curricula. As such we need to create a school ground that supports active experimentation by getting our children's hands dirty within fields of mud.
Children need guidelines but they also need room for wild, unconventional and novel methods of learning by doing. What children want and need most is simulated (safe) real world experiences. Not artificial substitutions of toys, but real human environments in relationship to the outdoor world. Teach them how to navigate the natural world before we introduce them to our artificial age of digital tech. It seems we have forgotten the art of caring for one another in the physical world the more we interact and replace human connection with blue lite screens designed by technologists and engineered by behavioral scientists to be all consuming and addictive, preying on our novel finding monkey brains. What we need to teach our children is how to take care of themselves, and be functioning, independent humans on planet earth, to think creatively and solve difficult and frustrating cognitive problems with their hands, and some pen and paper before we introduce them to the wild and artificial world of algorithmic technology that our brilliant money minds birthed.
